There is an imperative need that every missionary to the
Moslems should have definitely in mind the Christian message
which he bears. It is easy to prejudice the minds of
one's hearers and thus not only render the message inoperative
but make it the agency for closing the door of approach
for all time. Not every Christian truth should be preached
at all times and to all hearers, and there are many of the
truths of our religion that a Moslem is unable to bear until
he has learned other truths that prepare the way for fuller
knowledge. Christ addressed the parable of the lily and the
sower to peasants, the taking of fish to the fishermen, and of
the solidity of the great stones of the temple to his followers
when in Jerusalem.

Well-known workers among Mohammedans who know well
their doctrines and prejudices have suggested that the following
aspects of Christianity should be presented to Moslems
with caution, and then only after special and unusual preparation:

1.Foremost among then are the doctrines regarding the
person of Jesus Christ, like the immaculate conception, his
sonship, divinity, his death and resurrection.

Concerning these, progress must be made slowly and with
a degree of caution that recognizes the deep prejudices that
must be unseated before Christ can be enthroned. Here the
Koran can be quoted in regard to the divine nature at Jesus
and his prophetic rank. After that a positive preaching of the
manhood and nobility of the person will necessarily lead to
an acknowledgment of his divine character. It is well here
to follow the suggestions of Christ himself and so lift up
Jesus before them that they will be led to acknowledge him
as Lord.

2.Another doctrine is the fatherhood of God.

The gross and literal method among Moslems of interpreting
the doctrine of the fatherhood of God has made it impossible
for them, at the outset, to regard the declaration in
any other than a sensual manner. As the Koran always speaks
of Jesus as the son of Mary, the declaration that he is the
son of God makes Mary the consort of Deity, and against
this interpretation they rebel. In the same way and for the
same reason they deny that God is the father of men. Their
conception of Allah is so exalted and his position is so vastly
above all human relations, that they find it difficult to put
him into paternal relations with men. They recoil from the
first words of address in the Lord's prayer and ought not to
be asked to repeat it until they begin to grasp the meaning of
the Christian interpretation of God as the father of all
mankind. This alone when understood and accepted will
undermine much of the fundamental theology and philosophy
of Islam.

3.Prejudice is also aroused by the doctrine that redemption
comes only through Jesus Christ.

Redemption through Christ is a long way from a belief that
redemption is possible only through the repetition of the
creed of Islam and the performance of its five fundamental
acts of worship. To ask a Mohammedan at the outset to
abandon every essential doctrine of his ancestral religion
and put into its place another doctrine, which from childhood
he has been taught to regard as the very essence of
falsehood, is to violate the law of human thinking and every
rule of religious pedagogy. We may claim that the Holy
Spirit can and will prepare the way for the reception of the
most radical doctrines of Christianity, and yet it is
difficult to believe and presumptuous to assume that
Holy Spirit can be relied upon always to intervene as a corrective
of our failure to make use of the divinely given facialties with which we are endowed.

4.Another cause of stumbling is the denial that Mohammed was a prophet of God.

This does not even suggest that Mohammed's divine
character should be proclaimed or conceded. At the same
time one is forced to acknowledge that he did have a message
for the pagan tribes of Arabia that was superior to the
religion they formerly held and practiced. His proclamation
of the one great overruling God was a step far in advance of
the many deities worshipped by the Arabians. There are
passages in the Koran worthy to be read in the pulpits of our
Christian churches, and exalted conceptions of duty and
sacrifice that the centuries have not dimmed. There is a
wide field in which the Christian preacher may present the
claims of Christianity upon the Moslem without condemnation
of their revered leader who has been almost deified among
some sects. It is better not to make attacks upon the prophet
of the Mohammedans, but leave it to them, after they have
caught the transcendent beauty and felt the infinite power
of the living Christ in their own lives, to draw the inevitable
conclusion that Mohammed could not have been and is not
now the prophet of the living God.

5.It is also unwise to claim that Christianity is the only
true religion.

Such a proclamation, if it did not at once repel all listeners,
would precipitate a bitter controversy. One would not begin
here in preaching Christ to the followers of any other
religion, much less to Moslems. The appeal must be to the
desire in the soul of every man to find rest and peace in God,
and the Mohammedans know that this desire has not been
gratified through observing the exactions of their faith.
The proclamation that Christianity is a great and satisfying
religion that has met the demands of multitudes and is meeting
those demands today, is the positive message that must
end in the recognition that it indeed is from God and leads to God.

5.The use of wine at the Sacraments is repellant to Moslems.

It is fully realized that we are here treading upon ground
that, among Christians, is controversial, and yet there is no
sound reason for insisting that fermented wine shall be employed
among Mohammedans to celebrate the sacraments
when such use runs directly counter to their highly commendable
ideas of temperance. There are some who contend
that Christ himself did not use fermented wine: and even if
he did, does it follow that he would have us do so if it were
to make our Moslem brothers to offend, or even to stumble
and fall? It does not need to be stated here that all Christian
workers among Moslems should abstain from all use of
wine; which use the Moslems believe is contrary to the
teachings of Christianity as it is to their own religion.

There are several difficulties standing in the way of the
Mohammedan's quick acceptance of Christianity besides his
inherent prejudice. Many of these are perfectly honest and
need to be cleared up before Moslems can take their stand
for Christ. We can here name but a few of these.

1.Foremost among these is the high state of morality demanded
of men by the life and teachings of Christ.

To many this seems to be an unrealizable ideal and so far
beyond the possibility of human attainment that they feel
it to be useless to make the attempt at all. That Jesus
achieved it is encouraging, and that many others have approached
unto the perfect life gives hope. The doctrine,
however, to the Mohammedan who is conscious of gross
failure in attaining unto the lower standards of his own
religion, is a severe one.

2.The failure of Christianity actually to win all the western
world presents another difficulty.

It is but natural that the Mohammedan should seek to
know why it is that all America and all Europe are not yet
truly followers of Christ. He is also asking how it is possible
that the entire non-Christian world has not even yet heard of
Christ and had an opportunity to accept or reject him.

3.The supposition that Christianity has passed the zenith of
its power and is now a waning religion presents often a real
difficulty.

Many Moslems believe this, both because of its failure in all
of the centuries since Christ to win the world and also because
of the many divisions that have entered into the Church,
breaking it up into different and not infrequently mutually
antagonistic sects.

4.The composite authorship of the Scriptures also offends
many.

In comparison with their Koran written by their prophet's
hand alone, our Scriptures seem to them fragmentary, uncorrelated
and unauthentic.

5.Perhaps the greatest difficulty is the relation of Christian
nations to Mohammedan countries.

Since Moslem conquests ceased it has been the Christian
nations that have encroached upon Mohammedan countries,
gradually usurping their authority. This seems to them like
the spirit of the crusades inaugurated in the name of Christ
for usurping the national control of the world. They see that
today most of the Mohammedans are under the rule of
Christian nations and are beginning to feel that in time there
will be left no Mohammedan country that is ruled by the law
of the Koran. It is natural that they should regard this as
the fixed policy of the Christians, as it was their own in the
early days of Moslem supremacy. It is difficult for them to
see that this has not taken place under the dictates of Christianity.

The following fundamental truths and principles of Christianity have been suggested by a large number of experienced
workers among Moslems as containing that which appeals to
the Mohammedan's religious sense and that have in a large
number of instances received his hearty approval, and yet
even these should not be preached indiscriminately and without
regard to local environments and prejudices. The list is
not exhaustive but is suggestive of many applications and
divisions of these great themes that lie at the foundation of
our faith.

1.The unity of God is the most important of these. The
Moslems are so convinced that Christians are polytheists that
it is well at the outset to let it be known that we believe in
one eternal, all-powerful ruler of heaven and earth whose we
are and whom we serve. There is little if anything in the
Mohammedan conception of the Godhead that we cannot
affirm with equal emphasis, and to this we have much to
add. A bold presentation of the great truth of the one great
overruling God of heaven and earth cannot fail to disarm
the hearers of the objection that Christians have three Gods.

2. We may also insist with advantage upon the divine
omnipotence coupled with divine goodness. Here we move
away from and beyond the Moslem position which has little
to say about the goodness of Allah. They affirm his power
and his justice, but doubt his love. It is not difficult to
establish from the Old Testament and from nature the fact
of divine goodness which is a step in the path of the revelation
of paternal compassion. The Moslems believe in a great
God, but not a loving God. When they catch a vision of the
inherent goodness of the Godhead they will have begun to
break with the cold severity of Islam.

3.The use of miracles by Christ and his apostles has, in
many countries, proven to be of much value in establishing the
divine character of Christianity among both Moslems and
other non-Christian peoples. Whatever we may claim as to
the evidential value of Christian miracles, we know they had
a large place in the life of Christ and his apostles and that they
are no less effective today upon the mission field. The
Moslems believe that Christ wrought miracles but they know
little of the benevolent character of these mighty works.

4.The Christian doctrine of the future life is, some missionaries report, generally accepted by Mohammedans as
superior to their own paradise. In it they find an uplift and
joy that is far above their own sensual and sensuous conceptions
of the future. Some of the passages in the Gospel
of John and in the Revelation come to them with a mighty
appeal.

5.The purity and nobility of the moral ideas set forth in the
teachings of Jesus may be urged to advantage.
This does not presuppose the divinity of Jesus. His teachings can be presented as the utterances of a man who, in the
midst of the moral degradation of his times, set before the
world ideals of living of the highest and most exalted character.
Here is an inexhaustible field for instruction in which
no place for controversy can be discovered and through which
the Christ can be revealed in his beauty, grace and power.
In the minds of the hearers this win he set over against the
teaching and practices of their own prophet which many
Moslems fail to endorse as an ideal for the world.

6.The fact that Jesus practiced what he taught never fails to
make a profound impression upon a people who for generations have divorced principles from practice. The Moslem
will state principles of living that are not second to those
taught by Christ himself, but at the sane time he acknowledges that no one has lived in accordance therewith - not
even their prophet. This fact in the life of Christ, which
they do not deny, kept to the front, coupled with the teachings themselves, awakens a consciousness of his nobility of
character and sinlessness and tends to lead to adoration.

7.Moslems are also attracted by love expressed an beneficent
deeds and in unselfish character.
While Mohammedans admire unselfishness, their legends
being full of records of those who have unselfishly served
their fellow men, they have come almost to deny that it
today exists. Their theology aids to this conclusion. It is
difficult for them to conceive of an unselfish act calling for
personal sacrifice. It is at this point that the devoted life of
of
the missionaries, given to acts of beneficence, appeals to
them with tremendous power when they are convinced that
their deeds are unselfish and prompted only by love. No
one who has not lived among Moslem peoples can realize how
devoid is their life and character of this Christian virtue. We
have often misinterpreted Moslem acts of what appeared to be
supreme unselfishness, like the giving of alms and general
hospitality, as a demonstration of Christian virtue, forgetting
that through these acts he believes he is accumulating credits
in heaven by which his sins may be cancelled.

8.Christian secret prayer and worship is designed to fill a
need in Mohammedan life. The many modern movements
towards various forms of mysticism demonstrate the sincere
desire of multitudes of Moslems for a spiritual life not provided
for in the tenets of Islam. His set forms of worship,
mechanical and at stated periods, do not seem to satisfy the
conscious needs of his soul. Christianity assures him that
he who would worship God in spirit and in truth can do so at
any time and in any place; that the soul can be in constant
communion with its God, requiring no set form and demanding no ritual. Christianity offers all that the many
mystical movements have sought to supply and much more.
The Mohammedan has from the beginning believed that he
can draw near and speak to his God without the aid of priest
or mediator, but at the same time he has been taught that
times, seasons and forms are imperative. Consciousness of an
ever-present God with ear ever open to the cry of his soul
comes as a revelation from heaven full of beauty, comfort
and power.

9.Christian institutions for the relief of ignorance and
suffering are of great importance.
Here we come to a practical demonstration of what Christianity
has done in accordance with the principles taught by
Jesus. The benevolence of Christendom in founding and supporting
educational institutions, asylums, places of refuge,
hospitals and many other similar lines of work, is capable of
endless demonstration. What has been done in this direction
in Christian countries carries much weight, and yet here
it is more difficult to separate the act from a selfish purpose,
since Christians and their families enjoy the privileges afforded
by such institutions. When however the gifts of Christendom
are given for similar institutions in foreign countries for
the help and relief of peoples whom the donors have never
known and probably will never see, it is impossible to assign
a selfish purpose to the act. It is not difficult to connect these
deeds of Christians with the teachings and example of Christ
and to show that such institutions of benevolence, pity, and
charity spring from the very essence of the teachings of
Jesus and that a Christianity professing to be true to Jesus
that did not thus express itself would be false, and not Christianity at all.

10.Freedom of worship from casuistic demands is a counterpart
of the place of secret prayer. It is difficult for the
Mohammedan to bring himself to realize that acceptable
worship must not be offered in a formal way and that religious
acts must not be in accord with prescribed rules. He has
been held all his life in the trammels of form and ceremony
and the greatest aims of which he has been conscious are the
sins of omitting to keep all the demands of his religious laws.
Form and ceremony have been to him priest and mediator.
Christianity sets him free and brings him face to fact with
his God.

11.The possession of and reliance upon a book is in accord
with the predilections of an Moslems. They are ready to
accept the Book as containing the content and claim of the
Christian religion. They require no proof of its divine
character since their own Koran refers to the Bible as the
word of God and to the Hebrew prophets and Jesus as prophets
of God. They are already predisposed to look upon the Book
favorably although they may deny some of its teachings.
The preacher should be clear in his own mind that his book
contains the revelation of God to men and that in it is revealed the plan of salvation for the race. He should utter no
uncertain message as he offers to the Moslems the Bible in
the place of the Koran and assures him that it is the word of
God.

There will he no call for the missionary to go out of his way
to introduce to the Mohammedans the principles and methods
of higher criticism, for they are not ignorant of those principles
and will undoubtedly begin to apply them in investigation,
in their own way, as soon as they have sufficiently
advanced in Christian studies Already they find difficulty
in the composite authorship of the Christian Scriptures and
the widely separated periods in which the different books were
written. Still they are ready to accept the Book and it is
the task of the missionary to guide them into an earnest
study of its teachings.

12.The realization of a strong, free, pure Christian womanhood may with advantage be held before Moslems as an ideal.
Here again we are face to face with historical records which
have grown out of Christian teaching. The attitude of Christ
towards women is clear and there follows the necessity of
showing how that teaching has resulted in the elevation of
womanhood in all Christian countries. One of the chief
difficulties will arise from the presupposition, upon the part
of the Moslems, that their women are incapable of attaining
to the same high state that the women of Christian lands have
reached. Among Moslems they have never known such
women as Christendom possesses and it is easy and natural
for them to conclude that their women are intellectually and
morally inferior. It is not, however, impossible to prove,
through examples taken from among races formerly pagan,
that whenever and wherever Christianity is accepted by a
people and they begin to live in accordance with its precepts,
womanhood begins to emerge from its former state of suppression
and depression into new forms of beauty, strength
and grace. There is a boundless field here for proving the
practical value of Christianity in elevating the mothers of
future generations and thus recreating the race.

13.That Christianity awakens social aspirations, leading to
reforms is a fact that should be insisted upon. There is nothing
in Islam that leads to effort or sacrifice for the help of the
community. Not a little has been done by them in aid of
other Moslems at times when this seemed necessary to protect
their religious establishments. A Moslem community is
essentially selfish. In times of severe famine among them
distributors of relief have frequently remarked upon the impossibility of securing the services of any Moslem to aid in
saving life except by paying large prices. Moslem nature
seems to lack that to which appeal can be made for a
service of pure philanthropy. Human suffering as such seems to
make little or no impression. A community appeal falls
upon dead ears. It will be a long and difficult task to impress
upon them the brotherhood of humanity and to engender in
them a genuine desire to improve the social order and eradicate
its evils. What has already been done in this direction
in Christian lands can be cited with great force and cannot
fail to make an impression.

14.That Jesus came not to destroy but to fulfill the best and
highest aspirations of every man and of every religion should
also be set forth. It will not be an easy task to move the
Moslem from the position that it is the chief function of
Allah miserably to destroy all those who are not Moslems, to
the position that God cherishes and desires to preserve all
that is good in all lands and among all peoples, and condemns
everything that is evil wherever found. That Christianity
does not universally and indiscriminately condemn an Mohammedans to eternal destruction and assign all professing
Christians to an eternal paradise is a startling revelation.
That Christianity aims to reveal to every soul seeking after
God, be he Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu or pagan, the very God
he hopes to find comes with mighty force. It is a gospel of
joy to know that Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to
seek out the needy and the lost and to bring them into the
abundant life. This message will meet an immediate response
in many a Moslem heart that has been staggering
under the condemnation of his own religion while longing for
something that win show him the way to higher and better
living. It is here that the Gospel has a special message for
Moslems today wholly discouraged as to the national supremacy and coming to doubt the spiritual adequacy of Islam.

15.The presentation of Jesus Christ as a mediator and intercessor between God and man should be constantly made.
One of the supreme difficulties of Mohammedanism is that
Allah is so exalted and powerful that in his presence man is
but a slave too degraded to look even into the face of his
master. There is an awful gulf that separates between the
worshipper and his God. Realizing this fact, a multitude of
sects or divisions have arisen, all of them more or less mystical
but providing some way by which man in his low estate may
come nearer to God. Some of these make Mohammed an
intercessor between man and God. Others provide a Mahdi
or some other leader who claims to have special power of
intercession or who claims for himself an unusual portion
divine favor. In a peculiar sense the Moslem world is seeking
for some mediator between themselves and God and are
marvelously ready for the message that tells them of the
existence of that for which they seek. This presentation will
answer the cry of the soul of many who are seeking in other
ways to find access to their God who is afar off. There is
hardly another phase of Christianity more suited to the
present hour for which the Moslem world has been in unusual
preparation for a generation and more.

Growing out of the experience of missionaries in their
attempt to reach the Moslems most effectively with the
message of the Gospel of Christ, sufficient data has not been
gathered to make clear all those phases of the Gospel which
most appeal to the Moslem mind. We must bear in mind
that there are so many different grades of culture among
Mohammedans, that they belong to so many different races
and have come up in the midst of such varied environments
that we should hardly expect one method of approach or one
phase of the Gospel to appeal equally to all classes and during
all periods of their life. At the same time, there are undoubtedly certain phases of the teachings of the New Testament that are calculated to make a stronger impression upon
the Mohammedan hearers than other phases and that too
because the hearers are Mohammedan. It is this point to
which attention should be called, with the possibility that
missionaries having this subject in mind will experiment with
Mohammedan hearers until some conclusion can be reached
which will be of constructive help to those who would reach
the Moslem heart

Dr. Harrison in Arabia has made some experiments in his
hospital along the line of the suggestion with the endeavor
to discover what are the chief living forces of the Gospel as
applied to the mind of the Arab. In the plan some aspects
of the Gospel were presented to each individual patient in
the hospital in a personal and friendly way daily and the results were carefully noted and recorded. These different
presentations were along the line of the distinct doctrines of
the
New Testament teachings, the idea of sin and need of salvation, the holiness of God and the demand for forgiveness,
the historical presentation especially with reference to the
historic Christ, the parables and the lessons which they
teach. These experiments were so limited in range and brief
in period that it is impossible to draw any general conclusions from them, and yet it was evident to those who were
closest to the plan that some phases of the Gospel held attention more closely and made impression more deeply than
others.

The same experiments could he tried perhaps to better
advantage on groups of Moslems where the dogmatic, the
historical, the pictorial, the emotional and the mystical
phases of Christianity were presented at different periods,
observing and noting down the conclusion of the speaker or
of one who faced the audience with the speaker as to which
presentation seemed most deeply to hold attention. This
would he only one of the results of the presentation and would
need to be followed up in order to discover which presentation tended the most to inquiry for farther light or guidance.
There seems to be a field here for a legitimate and necessary
experimentation.

These are but suggestions for the consideration of those
who have opportunity for presenting the claims and promises of the Gospel of Christ to Mohammedans. They are the
result of wide observation and experience upon the part of
different experienced workers among them. While there is
much in Christianity, even in the fundamental doctrines, that
is not here mentioned, there is yet enough to call to the attention of all to whom these great truths are preached that
Christianity offers to the individual and to society that which
transcends everything Islam possesses and that meets the
cry of the heart after a closer walk with God. We need not
hasten to the more controversial questions until minds and
hearts have been prepared for the more difficult and more
personal truths.